The Ghost and the Femme Fatale Read online

  The Ghost and the Femme Fatale

  Alice Kimberley

  The local Film Noir festival takes a dark turn when a legendary femme fatale is nearly killed. Now, bookstore owner Penelope Thornton-McClure enlists the help of Jack Shepard, P.I. – even though he and his license expired more than fifty years ago.

  Alice Kimberley

  The Ghost and the Femme Fatale

  The fourth book in the Haunted Bookshop series, 2008

  To the noir filmmakers of the '40s and '50s for the remarkable art they left behind.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Sincerest thanks to Wendy McCurdy, executive editor, and John Talbot, literary agent. Like Jack, they are entities unseen, yet absolutely vital to the existence of this book.

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  Although real places and institutions are mentioned in this book, they are used in the service of fiction. No character in this book is based on any person, living or dead, and the world presented is completely fictitious.

  But that was life… light and shade… a coming in of the tide and a going out…

  – The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R. A. Dick (a.k.a. Josephine Aimee Campbell Leslie)

  Prologue

  I don't mind a reasonable amount of trouble.

  – Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon, 1941

  The Empire Theater 42nd Street, Manhattan April 16, 1948

  THE SPRING EVENING was cool, the 950-seat movie house was packed, and Jack Shepard was on the job, watching a too-young chippy enjoy a night at the pictures with her paramour.

  The doll was no raving beauty, more like the girl next door, with a pert face and dimpled chin, mustard yellow dress with a cutesy lace collar, curls the color of Cracker Jack, and young- seventeen, eighteen, if that.

  Planted next to her was the sugar daddy: thinning brown hair, Errol Flynn mustache, face like a flushed baseball. Not fat, but a torso plump enough to annoy the buttons of his three-piece suit. Hired cars and steak dinners every night would do that to an Alvin, not to mention downing case after case of prime tonsil paint.

  It was the sugar daddy's wife who'd hired Jack for this tail. Just a few days earlier she'd invited him up to her East Side penthouse…

  "I'VE SUSPECTED NATHAN of stepping out on me before," the wife said, "but he always denies it…" "And now?" Jack asked.

  "And now I've finally made the decision. I want out of this marriage, and I need help proving his infidelity."

  Jack had taken dozens of cases like this, with one exception: None of the cheating Charlies had been anywhere near as powerful as Nathan Burwell. Building a case against the District Attorney for the City of New York wouldn't be any private investigator's first choice of assignments. Jack would have preferred taking drags off a lit stick of dynamite.

  "I wonder, Mrs. Burwell, how many private dicks did you try hiring before me?"

  "Twelve," said the DA's wife. She lifted her porcelain cigarette holder-a favorite relic of an aging flapper-inhaled deeply, and blew a smoke ring. "You're lucky thirteen."

  Jack already knew he was pretty far down the food chain, not that his office didn't have a charming view of the Third Avenue El. Maybe he was crazy for even considering taking the case, but his current list of clients had more than its share of deadbeats, his rent was coming due, and Mrs. Nathan Burwell was offering three times his usual rate. For that kind of lettuce, Jack figured even a turtle would consider sticking his neck out.

  Besides, reasoned Jack, he'd never had any great affection for the DA. The man's greasy thumbprints were all over the dismissal of charges against a Fifth Avenue brat accused of sexually assaulting a young waitress in an alley during a night of carousing. "Not enough evidence," old Burwell had claimed. 'Course the young man's daddy also happened to be one of the state's biggest contributors to the DA's political party.

  Yeah, thought Jack, putting the screws to ol' Burwell wouldn't exactly be torture.

  "All right, Mrs. Burwell. Guess thirteen's your lucky number."

  "Good." She blew another gray, hazy ring. "Nathan doesn't want a divorce, you see." "Because…?"

  "When I met him, he was a struggling lawyer. It was my inheritance that kept us living high, got him where he is now, and I intend to take it with me-the fortune, I mean. He knows it, and he's in a powerful position to oppose me."

  "So you need evidence to get out. I see."

  "Not that I want any of it to be made public, you understand? I just want Nathan to be made to see that it's in his best interest to let me, and my twin daughters, and my money go. And-"

  "And that's where I come in. I get you, Mrs. Burwell."

  LESS THAN A week later, Jack was tailing Nathan Burwell and his chippy to Forty-second Street and taking a seat behind them in the packed Empire Theater. With nothing much to spy on but two heads watching a movie, Jack glanced up to do the same.

  Black-and-white B pictures like Wrong Turn were a dime a dozen, made on the cheap and frustrating to watch. There was always a rube taken in and destroyed by some too-slick dame. Jack expected no less from this lengthy roll of lamplit celluloid. In fact, he was set to be bored stiff-but then something interesting happened.

  As the treacly music pulsed and swelled, a real knockout entered the picture. Hedda Geist, the female lead, raced forward onto a deserted road, waving at a passing car.

  "Stop, please!" she called.

  The actress was young and beautiful, with waves of gold flowing over shoulders as creamy smooth as a marble statuette. She looked scared and vulnerable running along in bare feet, wearing a silver gown that cut like moonlight through the evening mist. The garment was ripped at the shoulder and she held it up with one hand while waving at the car with the other.

  Behind the wheel was some regular Joe, on his way home from a long day of lousy sales calls. One look at Hedda and his tires were squealing.

  Don't do it, buddy. Jack thought. I've seen enough of these pictures to know where she's going to take you…

  In the next row, the DA's young paramour began bouncing up and down in her seat, obviously excited about the appearance of Hedda Geist on screen. She pointed and whispered to Burwell, pantomimed a clapping of her white-gloved hands.

  The picture played out much as Jack expected, and he watched the two couples-the one on the screen; the other in the audience. Eventually, the credits rolled and then the A picture played: a sappy romance with songs, no less, a real snoozola. Then Jack's payday got up with the crowd and vacated their chairs. Jack tailed the two, careful to keep his distance.

  The DA and his date strolled down Forty- second Street's crowded carnival of noisy marquees and greasy eateries, legit theaters, and burlesque houses-exactly the direction Jack figured on-toward Hotel Chester, the quiet inn near Bryant Park where Burwell had seen the girl a few nights before.

  Just before crossing the intersection of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, with its railed streetcars and blinding billboards, they approached a concession booth. PHOTOS WHILE U WAIT! TAKE A PICTURE WITH YOUR DATE!

  Jack moved carefully ahead of the DA and his mistress, signaled the photographer that he'd paid earlier in the evening. The photographer nodded and pulled out his assistant, made like he was taking her picture on the Times Square sidewalk, but as the flash lit up the DA and his chippy, the focus was on them. Now Jack would have a picture for the Mrs. B. file.

  More evidence.

  Jack trailed the couple to the Chester. Burwell followed Miss Innocent inside, and Jack loitered outside. As the minutes ticked by, Jack surveyed his surroundings, noticed a gull gray Lincoln Cabriolet idling in the shadows across from the hotel. He couldn't see much inside the car, just a male driver and a woman in a wide-brimmed hat. He wa
ited for someone to exit the vehicle, but no one did. No one entered, either. They just sat there, burning gasoline.

  After another five minutes, Jack became suspicious. There were a few other sedans parked, all empty. At this time of night, there were plenty of people having a gay old time two long blocks away in Times Square, but this part of Midtown was deserted. The office buildings were emptied out. Corner newsstands were closed up. And you'd have to hoof it at least ten blocks to find an open diner.

  Jack began to cross the street; approach the idling car. Just as he did, the driver peeled away, sped toward the corner, didn't even stop for the red light. Jack glommed the license, jotted down the numbers in his notebook, noted the wheels were spode green, and went back to waiting.

  Twenty minutes later, the district attorney emerged from the hotel again; hair mussed, tie askew.

  "Not exactly a sixty-minute man," Jack muttered.

  He wasn't surprised at the brevity of the encounter. For some of these slobs, their marriages had grown so cold that just being in a hotel room with a chippy was enough. A blouse was unbuttoned, a lacy brassiere peeked through, then it was wham-bam, Act Three, and curtain.

  Burwell walked to the corner, hailed a cab on Sixth Avenue. Jack flagged down another and followed Burwell east to Park then north to the Upper East Side, land of cliff dwellers.

  One of the grandest avenues in Manhattan, Park was bisected by an island of lush topiary, its sidewalks cleaner than a hospital ward. The hack coasted to a stop in front of one of the endless rows of majestic stone high-rises. The place wasn't as big as Buckingham Palace, but it probably held more servants. A doorman in a uniform stepped forward, opened the cab's door. The DA greeted the gold-trimmed attendant, moved out of the shadowy street, into the light of the building's lobby.

  Jack made a note of the time. He was about to give the signal to his own cabbie to beat it when he noticed a familiar lady turning the corner. It was Mrs. Burwell, strolling alone down the avenue, a white stole glowing like a fur lifesaver around her neck. She smiled and nodded at a passing couple, approached her doorman, had a few quiet words with him, then ventured inside.

  Jack recalled Mrs. B. telling him about her weekly Junior League dinner meetings. The DA obviously made interesting use of his evenings when his wife was occupied. Like clockwork, he'd had it all timed perfectly, making it home just before the little woman.

  But Jack was on the job now. And once he got that flash picture in his hands, Mrs. Burwell would no longer be in the dark.

  "Dust out, buddy," he called, then told the hack to take him back where he belonged. "Downtown."

  CHAPTER 1 Opening-Night Jitters

  When it concerns a woman, does anybody ever really want the facts?

  – Philip Marlowe, Lady in the Lake, 1947

  Quindicott, Rhode Island Present Day

  LISTEN, BABY, YOU can't solve a puzzle when half the pieces are missing…

  That's what Jack Shepard advised me after I'd found the corpse that bright, spring morning, even though I pointed out his declaration had a few holes in it. People guessed at half-solved puzzles all the time.

  "What about Wheel of Fortune?" I argued. "You can buy a vowel and sound out the words. You don't need all the pieces."

  Jack wasn't impressed with my TV game-show analogy, partly because the show hadn't been invented until decades after he'd been shot to death in my bookstore, but mainly because he'd had more experience with homicide than yours truly, and not just because he was a victim of it.

  Jack Shepard had been a cop in New York City before heading off to Europe to fight the Nazis. After he returned from the war, he opened his own private investigation business- until 1949, when he was gunned down while pursuing a lead in a case.

  Unlike Jack, I, Penelope Thornton-McClure, single mom, widow, and independent bookshop owner, was far from a professional sleuth. Sure, I was a longtime fan of the Black Mask school of detective fiction; but a few years back, when the Rhode Island Staties were eyeing me as a person of interest in a murder investigation, I'd needed more than a fictional detective, and I got one.

  Not that I rely on the ghost exclusively. After I discovered the corpse that sunny May morning, I notified the authorities, like any sane citizen. But while our local police chief was still deciding whether or not the death was accidental, the PI in my head was pronouncing it murder. Not only that, Jack believed the first effort to end the victim's life had been attempted the previous evening, during the opening night screening of Quindicott's first-ever Film Noir Festival.

  At the time, I hadn't realized the "accident" I'd witnessed was attempted murder. Nobody had. Most of us had been too distracted by the preparations for the long weekend of events, myself included.

  The festival was going to feature book signings as well as movie screenings, lectures, and parties. At least a dozen of the invited speakers and panelists had front- or backlist titles to hock, and my bookshop was stepping up to handle the trans-actions.

  The primary reason for the film festival, however, wasn't to hand me book sales, but to draw crowds to the Movie Town Theater.

  For decades the old single-screen movie house had been a boarded-up wreck. Then a group of investors bought the property and worked for years to resurrect its spirit. I couldn't wait to see the renovated film palace, and on opening night, I was one of the first in line…

  "SO, PENELOPE, WHAT do you think?" Brainert asked, rushing up as I stepped out of the sparkling new lobby and into the theater proper. "How do you like our restoration?"

  J. Brainert Parker was a respected professor of English at nearby St. Francis College, a loyal Buy the Book customer, and one of my oldest friends. He was also a leading member of the group who'd bought and restored Quindicott's old movie house.

  As the chattering crowd flowed around us, I stood gaping in shock at the theater's interior. When a few impatient patrons jostled my stupefied form, Brainert grabbed my elbow.

  "Come on," he said, "we're in the reserved section."

  As we walked, I continued to gawk. Every last chair in the 700-seat theater had been reupholstered in red velvet. The aisles were lined with a plush carpet of sapphire blue that matched the lush curtains, now parted to reveal a huge movie screen beneath a proscenium arch carved in art deco lines. The lines were reechoed in the theater's columns, where sleek, angular birds appeared to be flying up the posts toward a sky mural of sunset pink clouds painted across the ceiling, which supported three shimmering chandeliers of chrome and cut glass.

  "Oh, my goodness, Brainert…"

  "She speaks!"

  "It's… it's amazing!"

  Brainert straightened his bow tie and grinned. He had a right to preen. Few people thought restoring our little town's only theater was worth the effort.

  "Looks a lot different from all those Saturday afternoons we spent here, doesn't it?" he asked.

  I pushed up my black rectangular glasses and shook my head in ongoing astonishment. "Do you even remember the last movie we saw here?"

  Brainert pursed his lips with slight disdain. "The Empire Strikes Back. Don't you recall? It was your brother's idea to take us."

  "Oh, my god… that's right… "

  I'd almost forgotten my older brother's obsession with Luke Skywalker, lightsabers, and space travel. Shortly thereafter, Pete's passion had fallen from the fantastical heavens to more earthly pursuits: hot rods and a hot girl, to be exact, both of which had led him to showing off on a dark road, where a tragic accident had taken him to an early grave.

  The Movie Town Theater had died around the same time: A brand-new multiplex had opened up on the highway. Eight screens meant eight different choices versus the Movie Town 's solitary offering. Like a lot of businesses on Cranberry Street, it appeared to have outlived its era.

  But Brainert disagreed vehemently with that mind-set. Retro was in. The nearby seaside resort town of Newport had been restoring like crazy, and he became obsessed with returning Quindicott's own dark
theater to its art deco glory.

  "It's remarkable, isn't it?" Brainert said as we took our seats within a roped-off section. "Everything old is new again."

  "Yeah, for a price," piped up the voice of Seymour Tarnish.

  The fortysomething bachelor and avid pulp collector was sitting one row behind us. For tonight's big event, he'd exchanged his mailman's federal blues for khaki slacks, a loose cotton button-down, and an untucked avocado green shirt-the perfect camouflage for his daily indulgences at the Cooper Family Bakery.

  "Oh, it's you." Brainert sniffed. "Haven't gone postal yet, I see."

  "I'm waiting for you to go first, Parker. Everyone knows academics are high-strung."

  Seymour was as famous in Quindicott for his lack of tact as his big win on Jeopardy! a few years back, but I'd learned to live with it. He was not only a reliable book-buying customer, he'd been surprisingly helpful to me in my nascent sleuthing.

  "So Seymour," I said, half turning in my seat, "what do you think of the restoration?"

  "Not bad." He tossed a fistful of popcorn into his mouth and began crunching away. "I remember seeing Jaws here in the seventies. What a wreck! You couldn't find two seats together that weren't broken. The floor was sticky-and I'm not talking SweeTarts sticky; I'm talking toxically gross upchuck sticky. And the columns were brown, weren't they?"

  "They were absolutely disgusting is what they were," Brainert said. "There was some sort of a… a crust on them."

  "Whatever," said Seymour, stuffing more popcorn into his mouth. "They look pretty good now."

  "Pretty good?" Brainert spun and glared. "I'll have you know we're going to get landmark status from the local historical society! And be careful with that popcorn. You're spilling it."